We'll Miss you, Herman

I loved this video clip from SNL last night, of Herman Cain.

Stop Playing the Nazi Card

The reason that Germany is hesitating on providing leadership in the effort to save the Euro is really not well understood.  This article in today's WaPo helps provide context:



Adolph Hitler with SS Members

 Instinctively, Germans understood the deal that Chancellor Helmut Kohl struck with French President Francois Mitterand at the time: France consented to German reunification, and Germany gave up the cherished deutsche mark in favor of the euro. Regaining territorial and political sovereignty meant giving up monetary sovereignty. The French calculus was to use the euro to tie a larger Germany to Europe. And that has worked — until now.

From the outset, the German people had reservations about the euro. When the common currency was introduced, polls found that majorities did not support it. But Kohl, as the “father of unification,” reassured his countrymen. It is no coincidence that the very same Kohl, now an ailing elder statesman, warned Germans this past week that the risks of stepping in to resolve the crisis are smaller than those of a collapsing euro system. However, large majorities of Germans now oppose some of the proposals for dealing with the crisis. They fear they will be forever bailing out Greece and Italy and the rest.

The deutsche mark was the tool Germany used to inoculate itself from the malaise of those countries. The currency embodied the country’s postwar reemergence as a symbol of stability and success. In fact, it was the only national symbol in which Germans dared take pride. When West Germany won the soccer World Cup in 1954, for instance, nobody sang the anthem, hardly anybody waved the flag. The deutsche mark became the last redoubt of German nationalism — a nationalism that outlived the currency itself. Economic nationalists are at the core of the current German opposition to the joint underwriting of European debt. While Chancellor Angela Merkel calls for “more Europe” to end the crisis, the economic nationalists see further transfer of sovereignty as a cardinal sin.

"They fear they will be forever bailing out Greece and Italy and the rest."  A justifiable fear, I'd say.

Is there a serious downside to the collapse of the Euro.  I'm sure there is.  But I also sense that the ones really afraid of its collapse are the investors and bankers (including Americans) who stand to lose a LOT of money from their promiscuous investments in European sovereign debt.  The attempt to save the Euro reminds me a lot of our own TARP.  A bank bailout that doesn't solve the underlying economic problem.

And as I've said before, the Euroskeptics who kept Britain and Sweden, among others, out of the Eurozone, have been proven to be correct.  The Euro wasn't the panacea people were claiming, and it has caused all kinds of distortions which are now catching up with Europe. 

Europe will still be Europe without the Euro.  It will probably be just a little more economically unequal, for some obvious reasons, but countries will truly be more in control their own economic destiny, for good or ill.  And that's probably just as well.

In fact, according to another article in the WaPo, the Euro has, ironically, actually exacerbated European tensions.

War would not have come to Europe, with or without the euro. A prediction made by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein in 1997 seems closer to reality. He argued that the introduction of the euro would lead to major friction within the European Union, because the problems in maintaining a common currency among so many countries would create confrontations and a rebirth of nationalism.

Feldstein was right. The current euro crisis has frayed nerves so much that Europeans have become more aggressive and even nationalistic again.

The polite tone cultivated for decades by E.U. partners has disintegrated into a tirade of insults. Germans have called the Greeks lazy, corrupt and just plain stupid. The news media in Germany gleefully point out Greek billionaires who pay no taxes, workers who retire at 50and harbors filled with the yachts of the idle rich. German politicians have suggested that Greece sell some islands to repay its debt. In return, Greeks have pulled out the Nazi card, claiming that the Germans owe them billions in wartime reparations.

Everybody, Hitler and the Nazis are gone, and they're not coming back. Germany has changed. It's now the most responsible economic and political nation in Europe, without exception. So stop playing the Nazi card.

Bailing Out Over Georgia

The Herman Cain Campaign

His campaign losing altitude fast (metaphorically speaking), Herman Cain is bailing out. 

One more lying politician who can't keep his peter in his pants.

Good riddance, Mr. 9-9-9, and may Gloria treat you better than you have treated her.  Though you don't deserve it.

Au Revoir, Euro

You know, I don't think that the collapse of the Eurozone would be the collapse of Europe.  When I've traveled around Europe over the last 15 years, it doesn't really matter all that much that you have some countries with the same currency and others with a different currency.  It's just a little more hassle, that's true, to go between Sweden, with the Krona, and Germany, with the Euro, than say traveling between France and Germany, which both have the Euro.  But not much.  You might have a few Kroner left over that you can't use in Germany.  That's about it.  Just go to the German ATM and get some Euro out.  Big deal.

The Euro was probably more of a symbolic matter than anything else, actually. The Euro symbolized a transcending European unity, whereas individual national currencies emphasize the existing national sovereignties.

The bad thing about the Euro is that it allowed the weaker economies to borrow money on the same basis as the stronger economies like Germany.  Not a good idea.  Now of course, everyone wants Germany to pay off those bad debts, which naturally they don't want to do. 

But the realities on the ground won't change, no matter what happens to the Euro.  Each country has its own language, its own culture, its own sports teams, etc.  And each nation has its own cultural characteristics when it comes to economics and politics.  The only thing that will change is that the ability to borrow money at a low interest rate (yield) will end, thus ending the artificially high lifestyle engeandered by free credit.  And that of course is a big change for the freeloaders.

And even if the Euro dies, it's unlikely that Europe will ever return to the old ways of war that devastated the continent before 1945.  No more than the U.S. and Mexico are going to go to war anytime soon.  No, those times are gone.  Believe me, European young people are definitely not itching to go fight in the trenches, to put it mildly.  Social unrest and rioting, definitely.  Anarchist plots and domestic terrorism, probably.  But not total war.

The Euro currency looks to be a failed transnational, globalized economic experiment.  Perhaps it's time to just shut it down and return to the status quo ante of 1998: the Drachma in Greece, the Lira in Italy, the Deutschmark in Germany, the Franc in France, and so on.

Different currencies are actually more interesting anyway, national works of art, really.  (I used to be a coin collector when I was a boy.)

The Clash of the Republican Titans

Whatever happens between Herman Cain and his wife this weekend (wouldn't you love to be a mouse in that corner!), he and Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are definitely Republican 'has-beens.'  They've had their fifteen minutes of national political fame, and now they're done.  Caput.  Finie.  I'll be so glad when Iowa runs their caucuses, and these turkeys exit the race.


"Fall of the Titans", Haarlem, 1588

 The new 'Clash of the Titans' in the Republican nomination race is now between the steady-eddy Mitt Romney and the rising Republican phoenix Newt Gingrich.  This should prove to be interesting.  (See Charles Krauthammer's insightful article in the WaPO.)

What Romney and Gingrich have in common is that they are good debaters, they both represent well the 1%, they are both foreign policy super-hawks, and they both have some off-putting personal characteristics.  So they actually agree on a lot, much of which could repel most Democratic and Independent voters.

Mitt Romney has been the 'stealth' candidate so far, flying under the radar, limiting his exposure to the media, doing just enough to stay afload but not doing anything to hurt himself.  So as one flash-in-the-pan candidate after another has appeared and then disappeared, Romney just keeps flying along at about 20% of the Republican field.

Newt Gingrich has really not been taken seriously until now.  Why that is so, I'm not sure.  He certainly has credentials, as I listed here.  But he sure has taken off, like a new German V2 rocket.

Here's a little of his biography from Wikipedia, which is quite fascinating.

Gingrich was born at the Harrisburg Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on June 17, 1943.  He was named Newton Leroy McPherson.  His mother, Kathleen "Kit" (née Daugherty; 1925–2003) and father, Newton Searles McPherson, married in September 1942 when she was 16 and McPherson was 19.  The marriage fell apart within days.  In 1946, his mother married Army officer Robert Gingrich (1925–1996), who adopted Newt.  Gingrich has three younger half-sisters, Candace Gingrich, Susan Gingrich, and Roberta Brown.  Gingrich is of German, English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry, and was raised a Lutheran.  Gingrich was raised in Hummelstown near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and on military bases where Robert Gingrich was stationed.

In 1961, he graduated from Baker High School in Columbus, Georgia. He became interested in politics during his teen years while living in Orléans, France, where he visited the site of the Battle of Verdun and learned about the sacrifices made there and the importance of political leadership.

He received a B.A. in history from Emory University in Atlanta in 1965, a M.A. in 1968, and a PhD in modern European history from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1971. His dissertation was entitled "Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945–1960".

While at Tulane, Gingrich joined the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church and was baptized by the Rev. G. Avery Lee.  In 1970, Gingrich joined the history department at West Georgia College as an assistant professor.  In 1974 he moved to the geography department and was instrumental in establishing an inter-disciplinary environmental studies program.  Denied tenure, he left the college in 1978.

Newt was elected to Congress from the Georgia 6th Congressional District in 1978. (My guess is that his interest in politics--having run and lost in '74 and '76--probably accounts for his failure to get tenure.)  And in 1994, he was elected Speaker of the House when the Republicans took the majority for the first time in 40 years.  He resigned in 1998, rejected by his own party for a variety of failures.

Newt's biggest liability is his tendency to be a know-it-all, pompous ass.  That really turns people off.  He's been more self-disciplined about that recently, using his pomposity mainly against the mainstream media.  We'll see if he's able to continue that self-control under the pressure of a presidential campaign.

Mitt's biggest liabilities are also personal in nature.  The first is that he is a Mormon, which the religious right--a big part of the Republican Party--is suspicious of.  And the second is his weird personality, which is hard to describe, but I think you know what I'm talking about.  He comes across somehow as inauthentic and defensive (such as on his recent interview on Fox News, which he complained about the questions he was being asked).  That's why he has shielded himself from the media most of this year, which in the short run has helped him, but in the long run will hurt him.

I'm guessing that Newt Gingrich has the edge in the looming battle.  But given Newt's self-destructive tendencies, I wouldn't ever bet a lot of money on that prediction!

Germany Says 'Nein' To Facile Eurozone Solutions

The rest of the world seems to be blaming Germany for the failure to solve the debt crisis in the Eurozone.  Easy, they all say, just let the European Central Bank be the 'lender of last resort' and print money.



Germany Destroyed After WWII

But Germany is saying 'Nein' to that, for the reasons explained below.  And frankly, I applaud Germany for their refusal to take the 'easy and broad road that leads to destruction'.  They know very well what total physical and financial collapse looks and feels like, which is one of the reasons that they understand that sometimes there are no shortcuts to economic wellbeing. 

And they believe that printing money to solve a debt crisis is a slippery slope leading nowhere good.  Instead, they recommend doing the hard but responsible things that lead ultimately to a better life.

Thank you, Germany, for the being the adult in the room.

A writer for Salon, Siobhan Dowling, explains the situation quite accurately.

So is Germany’s refusal really absurd, as The Times suggests? What exactly are its leaders thinking?

Analysts say that firing up the ECB’s printing presses to solve the crisis is something that goes deeply against the grain here. Instead Germany has been pushing austerity on indebted countries and calling for closer coordination of the euro zone’s spending and budget policies and tough sanctions on those who break the rules.

Some experts say Chancellor Angela Merkel is simply playing hardball, holding out on the issues of the ECB and eurobonds in exchange for concessions.

“Mrs. Merkel’s position has been to use the pressure that is exerted by the markets to help push countries that have budget or generally public finance problems towards a much stronger reform drive,” said Timo Klein, senior economist with IHS Global Insight. He adds that she is using that same pressure to try to make changes in the EU treaties to allow for greater budget supervision. “Obviously this is a high risk strategy,” he adds.

But Berlin also disagrees with its foreign detractors regarding the wisdom of using the ECB as a lender of last resort. “If this were to be seen as a standard procedure in future — that the ECB would be obliged to buy up large quantities of government bonds — then that is nothing else than monetizing that debt, and then before long you will have noticeable increases in inflation,” Klein said. (Printing currency essentially means that more money is chasing the same goods, which drives up prices.)

Inflation is profoundly worrying to Germans, due to the traumatic experience of hyperinflation in the early 1920s, when the personal assets of the majority of the population were wiped out. “That fear is so deeply ingrained, almost 90 years on, this is still very much present on people’s minds,” Klein said.

“Germans are probably more inflation averse then people in other countries,” said Sebastian Dullien, professor of international economics at Berlin’s HTW University. But he adds that they have become more concerned with inflation recently than they were between World War II and reunification, even though inflation was actually higher then. One possible explanation, he says, is that wages have stagnated in Germany, meaning that even slight inflation eats into people’s spending power more.

Moreover, where other see a necessary bailout, Germans see a handout to countries that are living beyond their means. They regard this as letting them off the hook for their profligate ways. Berlin is convinced that only by imposing stringent sanctions on these debt sinners will they enact reforms. It also sees this as the best way to win back market confidence.

This is a view many German economists share. “In Germany there is this feeling that if you just cut spending strongly enough then confidence will return and you will have more investment,” Dullien said. He points out, however, that market panics show that financial markets are not always efficient and don’t always process information adequately.

Nevertheless the thinking in Germany is that inflationary policies are wrong-headed in that they might cover up the cracks but don’t address the real issues.

New One Day Record

I just had my best day ever with blog hits: 207.  Groovy!

United States 134
Germany 16
Netherlands 11
Taiwan 9
Russia 7
Switzerland 5
United Kingdom 3
Australia 2
France 2
Kenya 2

And a few singles not showing.

Sex Addiction: A Serious National Epidemic

In case you hadn't seen it, I wanted to post some excerpts from Newsweek's article on 'sex addiction.'   I think this is a growing problem, and a serious one, largely due to the widespread availability of online pornography.  It needs to be discussed and not 'hidden in the closet'.



A Tomcat Enjoying the Internet

 As I posted recently, in connection with Mormon Founder Joseph Smith, Herman Cain (and other powerful men), etc, the male sex drive is such a powerful force in life and society that, unless it is controlled and channeled by societal mores,  religious traditions, and laws, it can easily be abused and corrupted, to the detriment of the entire society.

“Sex addiction” remains a controversial designation—often dismissed as a myth or providing talk-show punchlines thanks to high-profile lotharios such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Tiger Woods. But compulsive sexual behavior, also called hypersexual disorder, can systematically destroy a person’s life much as addictions to alcohol or drugs can. And it’s affecting an increasing number of Americans, say psychiatrists and addiction experts. “It’s a national epidemic,” says Steven Luff, coauthor of Pure Eyes: A Man’s Guide to Sexual Integrity and leader of the X3LA sexual-addiction recovery groups in Hollywood.

Reliable figures for the number of diagnosed sex addicts are difficult to come by, but the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, an education and sex-addiction treatment organization, estimates that between 3 and 5 percent of the U.S. population—or more than 9 million people—could meet the criteria for addiction. Some 1,500 sex therapists treating compulsive behavior are practicing today, up from fewer than 100 a decade ago, say several researchers and clinicians, while dozens of rehabilitation centers now advertise treatment programs, up from just five or six in the same period. The demographics are changing, too. “Where it used to be 40- to 50-year-old men seeking treatment, now there are more females, adolescents, and senior citizens,” says Tami VerHelst, vice president of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals. “Grandfathers getting caught with porn on their computers by grandkids, and grandkids sexting at 12.”

In fact, some of the growth has been fueled by the digital revolution, which has revved up America’s carnal metab­olism. Where previous generations had to risk public embarrassment at dirty bookstores and X-rated movie theaters, the Web has made pornography accessible, free, and anonymous. An estimated 40 million people a day in the U.S. log on to some 4.2 million pornographic websites, according to the Internet Filter Software Review. And though watching porn isn’t the same as seeking out real live sex, experts say the former can be a kind of gateway drug to the latter.

Take it from Tony, a 36-year-old from the affluent Westside of Los Angeles, who found his life thrown into turmoil by compulsive sexual behavior. “I was crippled by it,” he says. “I would go into trancelike states, lose track of what I was doing socially, professionally, spiritually. I couldn’t stop.”

He was ashamed of his tireless efforts to find women. “I was meeting girls on the basketball court, in the club, pulling my car over to meet them on the street,” Tony recalls. It took joining a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous 12-step program for him to realize that he wasn’t alone.

He also learned that his fixation on sex was a way of avoiding his insecurities and tackling the emotional issues that first led to his addictive behavior. “The addiction will take you to a place where you’re walking the streets at night, so keyed up, thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll just see if there’s anybody out there,’” he says. “Like looking for prey, kind of. You’re totally jacked up, adrenalized. One hundred percent focused on this one purpose. But my self-esteem was shot.”

Most treatment programs are modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, but rather than pushing cold-turkey abstinence, they advocate something called “sexual sobriety.” This can take different forms, but typically involves eradicating “unwanted sexual behavior,” whether that’s obsessive masturbation or sex with hookers. “We treat it very much like sobriety for an eating disorder,” says Robert Weiss, founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles. “They have to define for themselves based on their own goals and belief systems: ‘What is healthy eating for me? Can I go to a buffet? Can I eat by myself?’ We look at your goals and figure in your sexual behaviors and validate what’s going to lead you back to the behavior you don’t want to do.”

Sex addicts are compelled by the same heightened emotional arousal that can drive alcoholics or drug addicts to act so recklessly, say addiction experts. Research shows that substance abusers and sex addicts alike form a dependency on the brain’s pleasure-center neurotransmitter, dopamine. “It’s all about chasing that emotional high: losing yourself in image after image, prostitute after prostitute, affair after affair,” says the Sexual Recovery Institute’s Weiss. “They end up losing relationships, getting diseases, and losing jobs.”

The potential for abuse of online porn is well documented, with research showing that chronic masturbators who engage with online porn for up to 20 hours a day can suffer a “hangover” as a result of the dopamine drop-off. But there are other collateral costs. “What you look at online is going to take you offline,” says Craig Gross, a.k.a. the “Porn Pastor,” who heads XXXChurch.com, a Christian website that warns against the perils of online pornography. “You’re going to do so many things you never thought you’d do.”

Exhibit A: “We see a lot of heterosexual men who are addicted to sex and, because culturally and biologically women aren’t as readily available to have sex at all times of the day, these men will turn to gay men for gratifi­cation,” says sex therapist Donaghue. “Imagine what that does to their psychology. ‘Now am I gay? What do I tell my wife?’ ”

That wasn’t the issue for Max Dubinsky, an Ohio native and writer who went through a torturous 14-month period of online-pornography dependence. He says a big problem with his addiction was actually what it prevented him from doing. “I couldn’t hold down a healthy relationship. I couldn’t be aroused without pornography, and I was expecting way too much from the women in my life,” recalls Dubinsky, 25, who sought treatment at the X3LA recovery group and is now married.

If discussion of sex addiction can seem like an exclusive domain of men, that’s because, according to sex therapists, the overwhelming majority of self-identifying addicts—about 90 percent—are male. Women are more often categorized as “love addicts,” with a compulsive tendency to fall into dependent relationships and form unrealistic bonds with partners.

Addicts and therapists alike say they hope a greater awareness of the disease will eventually help addicts of all genders and ages come forward and seek treatment.

Useful Idiot for the Koch Brothers

One of the better observers of the political scene these days is Michael Tomasky, who writes for The Daily Beast and The New York Review of Books.  And even though we've moved on to Newt Gingrich, it's worth reviewing the sad affair of Herman Cain. Here is Tomasky's
take on the rapidly disappearing Herman Cain.

It now seems difficult to believe that Herman Cain, who once wrote a motivational book called CEO of Self: You’re in Charge, once ran a profitable pizza parlor, let alone a chain with hundreds of outlets. Cain’s campaign has been incompetent, all right. But that hasn’t been his core problem. That has been his vanity, which is of Brobdingnagian proportions, and his downfall serves conservatives right, because the only reason they embraced this buffoonish peacock in the first place was his race.

There have been two standard lines on Cain among the smart set. The first was that he wasn’t really running for president—he was running to increase sales of This Is Herman Cain!, his new book, and to jack up future speaking fees. The second has been the incompetence meme, a case made at length by Politico on Monday. The first assessment is plainly untrue, and the second is true but secondary.

That book, it’s clear from page one, is not the product of a man who wasn’t serious about his candidacy. He thought that the presidency was his destiny. Actually, I wouldn’t be shocked if he still thinks it. I know—this makes no sense. But trust me. He believes he was called.

The incompetence charge is real, and it’s tempting to think that it was ineptitude, or maybe stupidity or naiveté about the political process, that enabled him to announce a presidential candidacy thinking that the Ginger White story and all these other allegations would not come out. But it was none of those things. It was his astonishing narcissism. Let’s quickly allow for the fact that maybe Cain is telling the truth, and that he called and texted White’s cellphone 61 times in four months because he was “trying to help her financially.” OK; allowed. But now let’s contemplate what is probably the case, that White is telling the truth. If she is, then Cain cut off the affair just eight months ago, right before he began running. That’s not ineptitude. That’s just chutzpah.

It’s the chutzpah of a man who thinks, as all these Tea Party people seem to think, that he did everything himself in life. Cain was born and raised in Atlanta and was a teenager during the early 1960s, when historic and dramatic civil-rights events roiled that city. You’d think he’d be aware that those events had some impact on his life. But if he thinks that, he sure doesn’t say so in his book. He was “too young to participate” in the Freedom Rides and didn’t go downtown to any sit-ins. So therefore, if he didn’t have any direct involvement, he writes that it basically had nothing to do with him. Obviously, that movement gave him opportunities he never would have had otherwise. The historical ignorance is jaw-dropping, and it’s exactly the kind of ignorance that leads to arrogance, a feeling that he can do no wrong.

Cain is too self-absorbed to see that he made it as far as he did only because he is black. Conservatives and Tea Partiers are desperate to prove they’re not racists. A white man with Herman Cain’s exact experience and résumé would have been respected by conservative voters but probably would never have cracked 12 percent or so. But a black man! And one who denounced Harry Belafonte and Cornel West to boot! Cain was never more than an instrument of right-wing self-satisfaction and a useful idiot for the Koch brothers, who took a shine to his candidacy and helped promote it by sometimes paying him for speaking gigs around the country through the Americans for Prosperity organization. But Cain never bothered to learn much about policy and government. This usually isn’t a liability on the right, but his Libya meltdown was too much even for conservatives.

I only wish he could have held on longer. Contemporary conservatism is so fundamentally about rage against liberal society that GOP voters might well have nominated this man (remember, before these allegations struck, he was soaring). Cain could have been the nominee, and then been hit with the sex stories, and then said something on videotape to indicate that he hadn’t the foggiest idea where Libya was or what had just happened there. That really would have served conservatives right, to have been stuck with this haughty horse’s ass as their nominee just to score a point against Barack Obama and the white liberals who backed him. But even with Cain gone, I happily invite conservatives to continue to see the upcoming election as a revenge fantasy, which will only ensure that they won’t have the satisfaction of fulfilling it.

Is there such a thing as committing an entire political party to a mental hospital for observation?  This is no way to run a great country.

Mitt Romney Circling 'Round Newt Gingrich, Looking For a Weakness

Here's a picture of Mitt Romney inspecting the latest frontrunner in the Republican Party presidential nomination race, the rather rotund, 280 pound Newt Gingrich.

Oops, wrong picture.  This is an Argentine freshwater stingray, landed by Jeremy Wade.